Congressional Democrats Run to the Left on Iraq

This past week's Congressional buckling under to President Bush's refusal to sign an Iraq funding bill with a withdrawal timetable has accomplished what conservatives (like me) expected all along.

Frisco Nan, Reid, and their cohorts showed their true colors, trying to force a withdrawal from Iraq, without actually taking responsibility for it. It backfired, they couldn't override the veto, and had to back down.

But they are on record as having now voted, clearly and decisively, to cut and run in the face of global terrorism.

Additionally, it forced Hillary to run left, in order not to be outflanked by Obama Bim Baden and Chris Dodd. All three are on record now as having voted to gut support for our armed forces, and try to pretend we are a continental island in a troubled world.

Was 9/11 that long ago, that these Democrats think American voters won't recall that this type of thinking didn't work before? I continue to believe that they have badly misunderstood American voter sentiments, i.e., whether or not we should be in Iraq, we are, so let's win this time. Unlike the liberal Democrats' sabotage of our Vietnam policy during the Nixon administration.

Thanks to President Bush's fortitude, the Republicans now have the gift of a big, fat target at which to aim in the 2008 elections. The liberal Democrats are now "out" as soft and spineless on Iraq and the war on terror. This should result in GOP seat gains, and maybe a return to majority, in both Houses during the next election.

An Historic Week

From my perspective, stretching back to recalling Kennedy's assassination, and, barely, the Cuban missile crisis, President Bush's explicit promise to veto the Democratic Senate's and House's funding bill on Iraq this week, because it contains a mandatory exit date for US troops, is an historic event.

Unlike Nixon during the Vietnam war, Bush has clearly stated , in his Tuesday address, that he is not presiding over an explicit, publicly telegraphed pullout of US troops, in order to give our enemies a precise timetable as to when they may resume their terrorist activities. But doing so, President Bush has done two things. First, he's reversed the tendency of the modern Presidency, post-Nixon, to buckle to Congress and seek accommodation. Second, he has demonstrated that he understands the lessons of Vietnam, and dealing with an enemy as well as a hostile Congress.

Upon reading the Wall Street Journal's editorial this week about 'Harry Reid's war,' I had to smile at Reid's naivete. I think he's mistaking an American dislike of losing wars for a dislike of war. By thinking that polls are finding the latter, Reid is going to do the former, and, I believe, lose his party's Senate majority come 2008. Less than going to war, Americans dislike losing a war, and they won't be charitable to one of the architects of that defeat.

I also find it curious that Reid is from Nevada, which is smack in the heart of the conservative American southwest.

Rather than pick up seats, I am reasonably sure Reid and Frisco Nan will see shrinking pluralities should the Democrats stick to their current course in forcing a date for exiting Iraq.

Thank God that the US has a President with the calm confidence, resolution and clear-sightedness of George Bush. Unlike Bill Clinton, you can't accuse him of waffling or being fickle. He doesn't sway with the winds of what is merely popular, though ill-advised or wrong.

Bush knows that publicizing a withdrawal date from Iraq will simply hand our enemies key information which they may use to await our exit, then conquer the country. Even Joe Leiberman agrees with Bush. Is this the issue what will have the wavering moderate Democrat cross the aisle, and turn control of the upper chamber back to the Republicans?

Frisco Nan's Latest Blunder: Iraqi Withdrawal Timetable Legislation

House Speaker Frisco Nan is about to step up to the legislative plate for strikeout number three- backing a bill to set a timetable for US forces to withdraw from Iraq.

The gist of the current situation is that Pelosi's own erstwhile candidate for House Majority Leader, John Murtha of Pennsylvania, is leading his ultra-liberal, anti-war contingent to demand that any resolution the House now passes on Iraq be binding and cut off funding for the war, mandating withdrawal.

Whereas some cowardly Republicans would have run for cover in 2008 by voting for the original Pelosi non-binding resolution, they can safely retreat from Pelosi's new, Murtha-mandated version.

According to Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, in her excellent Friday column on this matter, Nan was unable to muster the House's radical left caucus of 70 Representatives, leaving her the unpalatable option of treating with the Minority's John Boehner to pass any Iraq war resolution.

Instead, she is moving left (yet again, as with the minimum wage fiasco, and the recent card check embarrassment), and planning to attach various pork items (funny, didn't Nan tell us that era was dead? oh, well.....) to lure the centrist, newly-elected Blue Dog House Democrats to vote for Iraq withdrawal and a funding cutoff.

As Ms. Strassel wrote in her column,

"The joke is that even if Ms. Pelosi can buy the moderate wing to her side, her proposal still might go...poof. And why? Her liberal wing, of course. After all the speaker's concessions, anti-war critics were still griping yesterday that the withdrawal proposal left Mr. Bush too much flexibility over the timing. Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Ms. Lee introduced their own amendment to the legislation that would demand a complete withdrawal by year-end."

At this point, I have to ask- don't any of these people recall what happened in Vietnam, when the Democratic Congress sank the prospects for salvaging any time of safety for Vietnam by publicly mandating a pullout by a known date? The North simply outwaited the withdrawal, attacked, and brutally conquered the South. Won't Murtha, Lee and Woolsey be proud when that happens to Iraq?

But, back to Frisco Nan's dilemma. Once again, she's caught between the wings of her party's House delegation. The new, majority-providing centrists Democratic Blue Dogs cannot risk, nor do they even philosophically support, Iraqi withdrawal. Meanwhile, Nan's own ideological kindred group, the ultra-left liberals in the House, won't support any moderation, now that they have finally retaken power after a decade in the wilderness.

Welcome to the big leagues, Nan. Maybe if you focused on the national interest, instead of purely partisan, fringe-group politics, you'd have better results. But, then, that would mean you'd be an above-average Speaker. And that's likely not in the cards for this hack in a skirt.